Gravity Hill is a two-night festival featuring place-based installations and performances curated in reference to the Pushkin Gallery, originally built in 1876. Immersive audiovisual interventions will be installed within the nooks and corners of the historic bank building, and musical performances will take place in the reverberant marble atrium. ACF creative director Michi Wiancko will perform her electro-acoustic solo project, Kono Michi, as part of the evening’s various offerings.

We are so very excited to invite composer and percussionist extraordinaire Matt Evans to ACF for a 2-week creative retreat and outdoor performance of his newest project, Aquatic House. Matt produces acoustic and electronic music, collaborative performances, and concept-driven recording projects through an eco-fictional lens.

Taking cues from interwoven organic species, entangled online networks, and intersectional thinking, Matt uses drum-driven hypnotic soundscapes and embodied improvisatory performance to question the unknowable and absurd relationships between the human experience, capital-driven consumerism, and ecological systems.

ACF is thrilled to collaborate with Nolumbeka Project once again in support of the 9th Annual Pocumtuck Homelands Festival, A Celebration of Art, Music, and Cultures.

It's our great honor to host a retreat for musical artist Hawk Henries, who is a member of the Chaubunagungamaug band of Nipmuck, a people indigenous to what is now southern New England. In addition to being an internationally-acclaimed performer and sought-after public speaker and educator, Hawk Henries has been composing original flute music and making flutes using only hand tools and fire for over twenty 25 years.

Also performing at the Festival: Keith Secola, the Kingfisher Singers, Iron River Singers, Wicozani, Black Hawk Singers. Social dancing led by Andre Strongbearheart Gaines and Robert Peters.

Conceived of and built collaboratively with artists and educators Mazz Swift and PaviElle French, the Institute is a multi-faceted, 2-week summer intensive, in which an accomplished group of fellows and mentoring faculty will convene to collaborate, incubate new projects, build community, and engage in mutual learning and activation towards societal change.

The Institute will also serve as a prototyping and seed-planting space for the creation of a radical new music conservatory built upon anti-racist and liberatory values, and centered on holistic approaches to artistic excellence, performance, personal wellness, decolonized academic study, career-building, and the creation of new work.

Helping to bring the summer season to a stirring close will be the magical musical offerings of Kamerin, a nonbinary, trans singer, songwriter, and teacher whose dreamy and introspective stylings combine a hauntingly pure, virtuosic vocal sound with electronics-based loops and tasteful beats. Kamerin isn’t afraid to show their vulnerability on stage as they explore places of loneliness, nostalgia, and heartbreak. Joining the concert are special guests from the Experimental Institute - Ché Buford, Sarah Zahorodni, and Michi Wiancko.

We’re also thrilled to announce a new media sponsorship by New England Public Media.

Join us for this special event and a sunset-tinged end-of-summer celebration sponsored by Upinngil Farm, Real Pickles, and Stone Soup Cafe!